Abstract
Composite material is one of the strongest candidates for deep see pressure hulls. Research regarding composite cylinders, subjected to hydrostatic pressure, has been ongoing for a couple of decades, abroad, but domestic research is very new. Experimental investigations seem necessary, in order to understand their structural behavior not only up to the ultimate limit state, but in the post-ultimate regime. That experimental information will be very helpful in the development of any theoretical methods or to substantiate any commercial numerical packages for structural analyses. In this study, ultimate strength tests on seven composite cylinders subjected to hydrostatic pressure are reported, which includes the fabrication method of models, mechanical properties of the material, initial shape imperfection measurements, test procedure, and strain and axial shortening measurements during the tests. The ultimate strengths of the models were compared with predictions of numerical analyses. The numerical predictions are higher than the test results. It seems necessary to improve the accuracy of the numerical predictions by considering the initial shape and material imperfections.